Hey Poptropicans—this is a guest post by Tyler Naimoli, an aspiring children’s book author and current illustration/journalism and design college student. The original version of this post can be found on his blog. Minor changes were made for the version below. Enjoy!

Tyler begins his post by giving a few reasons why a Poptropica movie doesn’t seem feasible right now, such as the recent layoffs of several respectable Creators, for whom he is now writing a Poptropica movie script, and the lack of attention Jeff Kinney has given Pop in favor of Wimpy Kid. Despite this, he hopes to see a film happen and has plenty of ideas to share…

No Jorge, I said we’ve had it with Diary of a Wimpy Kid movies!

Poptropica, one of many virtual worlds

While thinking about this whole thing, it occurred to me that virtual worlds in general are a largely untapped medium in film and even television. This is all the more interesting in an age that seems to be adapting just about anything that it can for these mediums, and the closest such media right now to virtual worlds are video games (even if nearly all adaptations are sadly lacking), apps (say what you will about their reasonability, though The Angry Birds Movie mostly worked) and perhaps even toys such as the Lego Movie franchise (Oh, the emojis? Um…don’t know what you’re talking about).

Aside from Poptropica, there are so many other virtual worlds that, while I can’t speak for all of them, contain varying degrees of potential to be adapted into film and television. Especially in today’s movie climate, people are interested in new things instead of sequels and reboots, and this interest in adapting as much media as possible is partly to blame.

For this alone, a Poptropica film or TV show or just any kind of major virtual world adaptation makes sense. It would not only be an original idea that would immediately interest audiences, but the goldmines of potential that virtual worlds possess means that if done right, such adaptations can be something that audiences can truly enjoy and appreciate. So why shouldn’t Poptropica lead this charge, before another virtual world potentially beats them to it?

The craziest part about this is that Jeff Kinney is aware of this. When Sandbox Networks acquired StoryArc Media in June 2015 (then called the Family Education Network), Kinney actually brought up the first official statement regarding the idea of a Poptropica film adaptation:

It’s a big day for Family Education Network and I’m proud to be part of this next chapter. The Sandbox team truly understands the informal learning space, what kids want, and how important it is to reach out to parents and teachers at the same time. They will support us with establishing Poptropica as a consumer storytelling brand for all media, languages, territories, and delivery devices, for generations to come, and I’m delighted that in time we’ll be seeing the stories and characters from FEN brought to life on the big screen.

Hmmmm……

And what’s the lore of Poptropica in particular?

Ignore the latest developments of the franchise for a minute. Ignore the popularity that leaves much to be desired for a minute. Let’s just embrace the universe as a whole, and everything that all the media has provided and established up to this point in order to understand why a film or television adaptation of Poptropica is so reasonable.

So, what is Poptropica, anyway? Is it a virtual world? An alternate universe? It just might be both. Poptropica’s past remained a mystery for years, until Poptropica: Forgotten Islands (available on iOS and Nintendo 3DS) revealed quite a bit about its history.

According to the game, Poptropica started out as a single landmass. Then a series of cataclysmic battles between giants and monsters took place in an attempt to rule the great land. However, no clear winner emerged. Instead, the beasts’ great power caused the very land they were fighting for to crumble beneath them, triggering what became known as the Great Flood. It would be this flood that would create the islands of Poptropica as they are known today. The original Poptropicans who inhabited the landmass prior to the flood fled underground to escape the destruction, where they emerged many years later as the Mabaya. Poptropicans from distant lands then landed on their islands, who called themselves the Trinity Syndicate.

The Syndicate attempted to colonize these lands which escalated into a war between the groups, and during this war, monks set out to protect the artifacts that would allow the aforementioned history to be documented. The war ended in a Mabaya victory, enticing the Syndicate to flee back to their lands in an attempt to save their pride. But they were forced to make peace with their enemies and remain inhabitants on the islands when they learned that their own people, wretched with greed, were unwilling to take them back. Later, pirates arrived on these islands who ironically attacked the Syndicate themselves, when they were saved by a young hero.

And that’s just Forgotten Islands.

Other media such as the graphic novels revealed even more about Poptropica, such as its peacekeeping organization, the Protectors, and their purpose of protecting Poptropica’s unique time-based properties as a highway of history. Time periods frequently stop their progression in time to occur on some islands, with such islands often occurring simultaneously. They periodically disappear and reappear, allowing a traveler to essentially travel through time without the use of a time machine. Astro-Knights, Mythology, Skullduggery, Mystery Train, Wild West, Arabian Nights and Greek Sea Odyssey are just a few of such islands.

Even when these time periods slip back into the time stream, one can head to Time Tangled Island and actually use a time machine invented by Poptropica’s preeminent scientist, Professor Peter P. Pendulum, to continue their travels.

The graphic novels also revealed the nature of Poptropica’s connection to our world, in which Poptropica is not just an alternate universe but a collection of such universes. Poptropica specifically uses the many-worlds interpretation variant of multiverse theory, in which even the most minor events cause the creation of new timelines, to the point that every possible event that could’ve happened in our timeline happened in other timelines.

Aside from the islands in which time periods settle, many other islands also disappear and reappear, which originate from and move across these multiple universes through a collection of time crystals at the heart of Poptropica known as the Nexus.

This offers much explanation for Poptropica Worlds, the infinite worlds one can encounter and create in Poptropica Realms, the connection to our real world (which Poptropicans may perceive as just another world), and the children’s book characters and properties that also occur on some islands such as Nabooti, Big Nate, Great Pumpkin, Wimpy Wonderland, Red Dragon, Wimpy Boardwalk, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Galactic Hot Dogs and Timmy Failure. It also explains why Poptropolis Games sinks and rises every 100 years, why the islands in the online games don’t appear in the graphic novels, comic strip and Forgotten Islands, and vice versa.

Travel from Earth to Poptropica and back is generally not controllable. The graphic novels show that one can accidentally end up in Poptropica via strange portal-opening storms. Interestingly, the comic strip shows another means via scientific accidents.

However, one gains much control over this travel via access to time crystals from the Nexus. There is also one island in particular that could hypothetically allow travel back to Earth: Mocktropica Island, which explains how Poptropica is also a virtual world. Admittedly, because it hasn’t been explained too well how Mocktropica Island fits into the Poptropica universe, this next part isn’t terribly rooted in fact and comes more from my movie script.

My own take on the plot of a potential Poptropica movie

From what I get, Mocktropica is the result of Poptropica being discovered by computer programmers, when they caught sight of and entered its portal-opening storms in 2007. Inspired by what they saw, they made a virtual world based on their findings, deciding to not reveal Poptropica’s existence to the world in order to fool the public into thinking it was an original idea.

However, instead of making a game about what they found, they decided to build the game through Poptropica itself. This essentially made the game a window to Poptropica, and with the right technology, a portal to Poptropica through cyberspace. This could explain the comic strip’s technologically-based means of accessing Poptropica, how the player goes so far as to end up in Poptropica’s servers during the Mocktropica Island quest, and how Poptropica’s rival developers at the Mega Fighting Bots website got to Poptropica in the first place. The Protectors allowed them to do this as long as it did not allow a global catastrophic risk to either Poptropica or Earth, which the programmers promised to do, and Spencer Albright watched over the project.

The programmers began by settling on an uninhabited island which they called Mocktropica Island, then building Poptropica Worldwide Headquarters and the technology that would serve as the bridge between Poptropica and cyberspace, and cyberspace and Earth. From there, they were able to properly travel between Poptropica and Earth this way, allowing them to build the game from not just the outside (telling the public that this was the only way they built it), but from the inside as well (telling the public that Mocktropica Island was just a metafictional idea).

The game would prove to have a powerful influence on Poptropica, as expanding the window would require technological interference to the islands that would be featured in the game. Although most of it is harmless, when the programmers started out on Early Poptropica Island, they were still learning. This could explain the 8-bit designs of the pilgrims, in which they were still trying to understand the designs of Poptropicans until they perfected the technology.

But even today, the programmers aren’t perfect. Glitches are accidentally created that occasionally menace Poptropicans, which the programmers usually fix without much difficulty. And events such as the Mocktropica Island quest happen. Even so, none of these events were considered great enough for the Protectors to shut the game down. Whew!

And if this explanation of the Poptropica universe isn’t enough to convince you that the franchise is worthy of a film or television adaptation, consider the stories that can be told of characters such as Ned Noodlehead, Super Power Island’s premier crime fighter who is at odds with the fact that he is the brother to supervillain Betty Jetty. Or C.J., the genius of Shrink Ray Island who designed its namesake device, or the day-to-day activities of the Protectors. Or the story of how the blimp was built on Monkey Wrench Island, or what a typical day on the island is like for Crusoe. Perhaps the most obvious stories to tell, however, are the antics of Oliver Hartman, Jorge Flores and Mya Wong, or maybe even a typical day at work for a Poptropicanized Jeff Kinney (dare we dream).

And that’s not even getting to the rich rouges gallery of villains that have been created over the years to oppose these heroes, as well as some of their interestingand overlooked origin stories that could be touched upon as well. Dr. Hare, Copy Cat, Speedy Spike, Sir Rebral, Ratman, Crusher, Betty Jetty, Director D., Vince Graves, Binary Bard, Black Widow, Zeus, Medusa, Captain Crawfish, Gretchen Grimlock, El Mustachio Grande, Mr. Silva, E. Vile, Ringmaster Raven, Myron Van Buren, Omegon, Princess Scheherazade, Octavian, Red Baroness…the possibilities are endless.

Even Dr. Cumulo Nimbus from the Blimp Adventure DLC quest, Arthur Eraser from the Pencil Warrior coloring book, and perhaps even the infamous Afro Guy glitch present some interesting antagonistic potential. And when you take all these things into consideration, you might get a synopsis like this:

Oliver Hartman may be the coolest kid in school, with his popularity and good looks, but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. His genius-hating peers don’t know he’s hiding a machine that could save the world. They make him bully kids such as Jorge Flores. He’s also got something of a distant relationship with his half-sister, Mya Wong, that he can’t quite understand.

When his mother learns of his actions, she takes him to the science fair to inspire his intelligence. A malfunctioning science project thrusts Oliver, Jorge and Mya into Poptropica, an alternate world consisting of an uncharted group of islands whose existence is only known from an online game. As the kids try to find a way back to Earth, little do they know that Octavian, a staff member at the school, was a Poptropican and former member of its peacekeeping organization, the Protectors, who exiled him to Earth for his views on governing time and space and his crimes with the organization’s time crystals.

Now that he’s managed to follow the kids back to Poptropica, he’s redirecting his plans elsewhere to get his revenge—plans that involve where the game was built at Mocktropica Island. Octavian was the only Protector to ever witness the disastrous glitch known as Afro Guy, accidentally created by the developers, before the glitch was successfully contained.

With the game connecting Poptropica and Earth together, Octavian’s plans are going to threaten the existence of both worlds. Get ready for high-octane adventures as Oliver comes to terms with who his true friends are – and just how important his intellect may be. Be ready to explore, collect and compete!

And let’s not forget the soundtrack – I’m thinking an epic remix of Jeff Heim’s music. A remix of the Home Island theme can play at the beginning of the movie, as Spencer Albright explains Poptropica’s history via voice over, accompanied with breathtaking illustrative visuals. 😀

With that being said, a film or television adaptation of Poptropica, or just of virtual worlds in general, just has to happen. It’s not the first thing that can be done to restore Poptropica’s greatness, but it’s the ultimate dream for the fanbase that can be achieved once Jeff Kinney shifts his focus, as I previously explained.

Although I have all the major ideas for the script, I’m still working on the details and putting it all together. This is where the fans could come in, and I’m totally open to adjusting the script accordingly to whatever the fanbase believes is the best route to take with it. So, Poptropica fans: What are some ideas you have for a Poptropica movie? Share them in the comments, and let me know if you’d like to work together!

The game may not be thinking big right now, but that doesn’t mean we can’t.

The Poptropica Help Blog welcomes interesting Poptropica insights from anyone in the Poptropica community with thoughts to share. You can find some tips and guidelines on our Write for the PHB page. We also encourage sharing blog posts on the PHC.

Hello, everyone! Lucky Joker popping in to announce, first of all, that Greek Sea Odyssey is now available to everyone on Poptropica Worlds!

Poptropica hasn’t made an official announcement yet (get on it, Creators) — but the membership lock is indeed gone from the map. If you need a hand, check out our Greek Sea Odyssey Island Guide here on the PHB, complete with pics, trivia, and more!

I’m also here to walk you through an advertisement on both Poptropica Worlds and Poptropica Original. The ad is for Sherlock Gnomes, which premieres in theaters on March 23. There are many prizes to be earned, so let’s pop into it!

On both Poptropicas, you should be able to find the ad on Home Island. It’s worth playing the game on both because there are different prizes to win for each.

Upon entering, Sherlock Gnomes will send you off to find five gnomes.

You’ll have three whole minutes to find the missing gnomes, but it shouldn’t take longer than a minute. Here’s an image GIF to help you if you can’t locate all of them.

The four prizes you can earn between both games include: a funny looking Gnome Hat on Worlds, plus Gnomeo and Juliet followers and a Shrink Power card on Pop Original. Also inside the ad, there’s a printable color sheet you can click on.

Additionally, there’s a free Lucky PopGum on Home Island of Pop Original on top of the arcade—available this week only.

Looks like it’s part of something called March Prizes, so maybe there will be more? This gum comes just in time to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day this weekend.

Well, that about wraps this post up. Thanks for reading, as always! Talk to you in the next one.

In February, we held a survey nearly throughout the entire month to help us better understand our reader demographic. Over the course of the three weeks the survey was left open, we received 147 individual responses from people across the globe.

Down below are various interactivecharts, made with Google Sheets, that you can hover over to view more details about each question—like how many people chose a certain option, for example. Let’s get into it!

As you might know, the PHB has conducted a few readers’ surveys like this in the past years (2014, 2016, and 2017). We were curious to see how many people took those surveys and were back to take this one.

Only 11.6% of this year’s participants also participated in 2014’s survey, which is a decrease from last year’s result. That percentage almost doubles for 2016, with 20.6% of this year’s participants also taking that survey. A higher 32.2% of people partook in last year’s survey, and a whopping 35.7% ofrespondents chose 2018 as their first year participating in our readers’ survey. To me, this was quite surprising. There must be a good amount of new readers since last year.

Next, we asked a pretty straightforward question: What is your gender? The result seems to be about the same every year with the majority of our readers being female. However, there was an increase in the percentage of males taking the survey this year with 39.9%.

Also, there are a select few that don’t identify as male nor female, as seen in the graph.

Poptropica’s targeted age range (ages 6-15) continues to be the largest group of respondents, totaling at about 55%, which makes sense.

An interesting thing to note, though, is that the older age sections have grown, and the younger age sections have shrunken over the last year—and this seems to be an ongoing trend. There are more adults in the community than in previous years. This is most likely because those of us who began playing as younger kids have stuck around to grow older with the community.

What country do you live in?

The next question we asked was what country you live in, and this geographical chart shows just that. You can hover over any country to see how many people took the survey from that particular place.

The darker the shade of blue—the more people from that country that took the survey; the lighter the shade—the fewer survey takers there are from that country.

If a country appears gray, that means there were no participants from that country.

The United States is, once again, the leading country of survey participants with an overwhelming 73.9%. Here’s a pie chart that also displays this data:

For the sake of comparison among the other countries, I’ve also created this pie chart without the US responses.

Besides the US, the two countries with the most readers is Canada (with 8.7% overall, 33.3% excluding the US) and India (with 3.6% overall, 13.9% excluding the US). As for the rest of the countries, it’s pretty much even. This includes Australia, which was once one of the countries with the highest reader population of the PHB. Sad to see you go, Aussies.

If you live in the US, which state or territory do you live in?

With another question about location comes another geographical chart. It works the same as before: just hover over any state to see how many people from that particular state took the survey.

Presumably, the states with a general high population will have the most readers and that seems to be the case here, as the top 5 states with the most survey participants are California (15.4%), New York (8.7%), Florida (7.7%), Ohio (7.7%), and Texas (5.8%)—all of which are in the top 10 most populous states of the US.

Now let’s move on to the Poptropica-related questions.

Here we ask which year you started playing Poptropica.

As you can see from the charts, 2010 still remains to be the most popular year our readers began playing Poptropica. Overall, the earlier years seem to be the time when most people joined Poptropica—which is pretty much an identical result to last year. You can tell if you compare the first six years to the last six years in the pie chart.

The results for this question are fairly interesting. Once again, the respondents are pretty split between all of the options.

However, it’s worthy to note that it appears people are playing Poptropica less often than before. The leading category this year is once every couple of weeks, whereas before the most populous category for the past three surveys was a few times a week. Quite the difference there. This is most likely due to Poptropica putting out new content less frequently as they once were.

As for membership, just like last year, the results are not so split.

The participants that do have (or are expecting) membership remain the minority (19.3%) and the participants that don’t have membership remain the majority (80.7%). A large portion of those who don’t have membership are players who have never had a membership before—56.6% to be exact—which is an increase from last year.

And now to the PHB-related questions!

Here we start off with the question asking of when you found the PHB.

As to be expected, more of the recent years got the most votes. However, there are still a few oldtimers reading the PHB today (or at least that came back to take the survey).

Visibly, the leading year is 2016, consuming almost a quarter of the pie chart alone. Not too far behind are the years 2015 and 2017 with about 15%, and after that, 2014, with 12.1%.

With no surprise, searching the web dominates all of the other options with an immense 81%, just like all of our past surveys—probably to get help on an island (but we’ll get more into that later). 8.2% say they found the PHB from another website, and 4.1% say they found the PHB through social media. These are both significant increases from last year. On the flipside, the from a friend option percentage underwent a decrease from last year. The remaining one respondent says they found the PHB through a teacher. It’s great to see we’re reaching people in new ways!

We covered the when and the how, but now it’s time to see how often. For this next question we asked how frequently you visit the PHB.

Unfortunately, it looks like people are checking up on the PHB less often. Last year, the most popular choice was once a day, and before that—several times a day. Now, most people are on the PHB several times a week, a few times a week, and once every couple of months. Still, not too shabby.

I’m assuming this also has to do with the lack of content we’ve been getting from Poptropica, so there isn’t much news to post about.

Poptropica News continues to be the reigning most enjoyed post category with over 100 votes. Many of you also said you enjoyed Blog Updates, Reviews, Contests, Pop 5s, My Place in Poptropica stories, and Spotted Dragon’s Community Creations series—each with 50-70 votes.

A few of you used the other option to type in what you enjoyed that wasn’t on our list in the survey including our Island Guide pages and Popspiracies posts. Three people even typed all of them. Thanks, guys!

We also wanted to know what other facets of the Poptropica Help Network you typically browsed, and it looks like all of them get a decent viewing.

Poptropica Wiki has gained quite the amount of popularity with almost double the percentage of last year’s result. Everything else has stayed very much the same, however.

Outside of the Poptropica Help Network are dozens of other Poptropica sites, with writers who work diligently to provide the best of Poptropica news and other great stuff—and we were wondering which ones you frequently visit.

This year is the first year where most of our participants say they only view the PHB and no other fansites.

Other than the PHB, though, the three most popular choices were Lucky Wing’s Blog O’ Fun (with 11 votes), the Poptropica Creators’ Blog (with 10 votes), and Clawtropica (with 7 votes).

Although some of the other sites didn’t receive as many votes, they are still great sites nonetheless and we encourage you to check them out! Many of them are affiliated with the Poptropica Blogger’s Network.

Well, that concludes the 2018 survey analysis! I hope you enjoyed this insight on our reader demographic — I sure did!

What did you think of the results? Were there any that surprised you? Make sure to leave your thoughts in the comments section below!

This is the My Place in Poptropica story of Shiny Panda, who found Poptropica through her friend and continues to come back to the game for nostalgia. See below for details on how to send in your MPIP story to be published here on the PHB!

The great nostalgia

When the My Place In Poptropica series was first introduced around 2015–2016, I decided to play Poptropica a lot more because nostalgia is great. So BAM, here I am, wasting the time of the people who want to read this.

I was around for the release of Escape From Pelican Rock Island, then I sort of quit. I forgot about Poptropica because of school, work, and forums. When I came back, Nabooti Island wasn’t members-only anymore, which was great, but I digress.

Flashing back to a friend

My Poptropica username is AwesomeCY:) which I made when I was about 7 or 8 years old, so don’t judge. I really worked hard on my medallions and some islands take a long time, so I once I got back into the game in late 2017, I didn’t want to make a new account.

I was referred to Poptropica by a friend, whose character is Sleepy Lobster and her username is anna19722006 (super long string of numbers, rip). Sleepy Lobster, or Anna, has been my best friend for what, 11 years now? I’ve known her for almost all of my life. We still go to the same school, surprisingly.

What happened that day was, Anna was at my house and we were getting super bored of whatever game we were playing that day. So Anna, being the good girl that she is, racked her brain and remembered, “Oh hey! Poptropica exists!” I made an account and she told me to add her. We did some other stuff, but my memory is hazy—it was a long time ago.

Early PHB memories

Anna taught me how to do 24 Carrot Island, which was her first island. When I got stuck, I searched up how to complete it, and that’s how I came across the PHB. With the help of the Poptropica Help Blog, I finally finished it.

So I used the site more and more to get island help, and eventually got roped into the community. I think some of you might remember the previous staff, like HPuterpop—I was around then. And so were Brave Tomato and Spotted Dragon! I even got my Poptropica avatar meme-ified by Ultimate iPad Expert. ❤

Another fun fact: I still remember when the help blog’s URL was poptropicahelp.net! poptropi.ca is still new to me.

Ta ta for now! I still love Poptropica, and will always. It’s been a big part of my life, and I’m not about to let that go. 😛 If you wanna contact me, I have a DeviantArt (for close friends only) and a Discord, frayed#5739. So if you have any more questions or anything, just shoot me a friend request. So — maybe I’ll see you guys around?

Hope you enjoyed this “My Place in Poptropica” story!

If you haven’t already, we invite you to send in your own. Please include your username and a minimum of 500 words, typed with good spelling and grammar, and divided into labeled sections. If you send in your story, we will continue to post newcommunity MPIPs!

Interested in writing for the PHB under a different Pop-topic? Take a look at our Write for the PHB page for ideas, guidelines, and more. We always welcome new guest posts!

To start with, Nate Greenwall, the inventor of Dr. Hare who was recently let go from Poptropica, tweeted some really cool sneak peeks of old sketches! These drawings include costumes, buildings, and diagrams of islands.

The first photo contains many of the costumes we know and love today (including Captain Crawfish’s costume itself), but the second photo is where it gets more interesting. Most of the drawings are of scenes we have already seen from Shark Tooth, but there is one piece of paper that is cut off, describing an unknown island. It appears to end with an R, and there is a sketch labeled “GHOST SHIP” that has jellyfish obstacles, requiring you to talk to ghosts to get a combination for a chest. It looks less fleshed out than the other sketches, so it’s likely that it was never planned to be released.

The items in the third photo are also interesting, especially since you can see a small portion of what looks like an early version of the Flying Squid tribe room. There are also some sketches of the cheese curd factory on Mocktropica, including an odd drawing of a machine twisting a cow to get milk.

In other news, recently on Instagram, user karin2_arts asked under one of Poptropica’s photographs (@poptropicacreators) whether there will be any more updates coming to Poptropica Original. And somewhat surprisingly, they said yes!

So what could these updates include? Well, I have a feeling there won’t be a new island; after all, Poptropica Worlds will likely have all of the Original’s islands eventually, so there wouldn’t really be a point. Some more plausible updates could be new costumes, updates to Home Island, or possibly even a new mini-quest if we’re being ambitious. But who knows? Maybe the Creators will surprise us again!

Speaking of Creators, the official Poptropica Twitter (@Poptropica) has unfollowed hundredsof people, narrowing it down to just 19 accounts (the PHB’s Twitter is one of the few not unfollowed). One of the people unfollowed includes Jessica, also known as Skinny Moon, the previous social media manager. She tweeted:

And they pretty much unfollowed everyone. Part of being on social media is being SOCIAL and not elitist. Follow your fans back @Poptropica. #notcool

She’s not wrong. After all, she brought the community together and made people excited for updates; Poptropica should value her opinion. Elitism creates isolation, and isolation creates unhappiness. Jessica also mentioned that this new social media direction could be because of employee changes:

I don’t know who’s running the social media, now that most of the company is gone. But it stinks seeing everything get dismantled. 😞

We’ve known that some senior Poptropica employees have recently been let go, but she says “most of the company is gone.” What does this mean for Poptropica’s future? How will updates be done in a timely manner with few employees? Right now, the future of Poptropica is looking pretty grim…

What do you think of the sketches? Or the promise of updates coming to Poptropica Original worked on by unfamiliar employees? Leave your thoughts below!

This is the My Place in Poptropica story of Maroon Panda, who found Poptropica through competing with her best friend in searching for fun online games. See below for details on how to send in your MPIP story to be published here on the PHB!

2014 | Searching for fun online games

Me and my best friend had this thing where we would see who could find a good online game, and we’d spend literally months searching for one that fit all our standards.

One day I was browsing the web when I saw a list of games that included Poptropica (at the time, I thought it was Pop-ter-eca). What a weird name! Intrigued, I clicked on it and was brought to the home screen. I clicked “create a new character,” and my Poptropican was born!

My BFF always won our little contests about finding a good online game since she had an older brother to help her out, so finding Poptropica that day was a good day for me! I played for a couple days, then stopped, then picked it up again, and continued to play on and off for a while.

2015 | Telling my friend

I couldn’t figure out how to save my game, so I had way too many characters. I finally learned how, but then I couldn’t remember what my password or username was, so I made way too many accounts! Eventually, though, I settled on an account.

At this time, my 9-and-a-half birthday was coming up (my family didn’t celebrate my ninth birthday), and we were going to Legoland! That was the day I told my friend about Poptropica, because she said she loved puzzles. But she told me she already tried the game and didn’t like it. That made me sad and I stopped playing it for a while.

2016–present | Hey, remember that game?

Sometime in 2016, I randomly thought to myself, hey, what about Poptropica? I tried to log in, but I couldn’t remember my account. So I made another account and began playing.

I soon got stuck—these islands were a lot harder than I thought they were! In a search for answers, I googled and googled and googled until I found the *drumroll* PHB! As soon as I clicked into this site, I knew I liked it, and in fact it’s helped me finish a lot of islands.

I kept on completing islands until school got harder for me and I had to switch schools. I didn’t play for a while because I was focusing a lot on school. I also struggled with my over-active imagination, which made me think that some of the things I dreamed or thought about actually happened.

Over the summer, my dad said I should start a blog, so I did—it was about games. I thought about the PHB, and got back into playing Poptropica. That’s when I finally made Maroon Panda, my current avatar. I also discovered Thinknoodles and started to watch his videos. And I finally made my little brother the account he had been asking (begging) for. His name is Speedy Panda (weird, right?) and his username is awesomeharms!

Thank you for taking the time to read my Poptropica story! Maroon Panda out!

Hope you enjoyed this “My Place in Poptropica” story!

If you haven’t already, we invite you to send in your own. Please include your username and a minimum of 500 words, typed with good spelling and grammar, and divided into labeled sections. If you send in your story, we will continue to post newcommunity MPIPs!

Interested in writing for the PHB under a different Pop-topic? Take a look at our Write for the PHB page for ideas, guidelines, and more. We always welcome new guest posts!

Hello once again everyone! Spotted Dragon here bringing you the February recap for Community Creations! February’s theme was colorful and the featured work is not in any particular order. Be sure to check out all the featured artists!

Can you believe this series has been around for a full year already? In Feb. 2017 we kicked things off with the theme of “shipping.” Your creations never cease to amaze us, so keep them coming! 😀

Top 5 Picks

Early Saturday Fishing by Ally

Wonderful! Super soft and colorful, with great line work. This scene is not one you find often in Poptropica fan art, but it sure is beautiful! It’s very peaceful and all the colors work perfectly together. I can almost feel the fresh Spring air! Stunning! Find her Twitter here.

Color Changing by JordynGowens

Wow! Great spin on this month’s theme. You may recall some color-changing costumes that were added to the Poptropica Store a while back, and here they are again in this drawing! Of course, totally fitting for our color theme. The bright, neon tones really pop against the dark background, and the poses are super cool. Everything is drawn smoothly and simply. Excellent idea and execution! Find her DeviantArt here.

Friends’ Love by HfEvra

Cute! The art style is spot on Poptropica Worlds. Super accurate, outfits and all. The lighting also brings to life the setting, because of how bright the sun seems. And of course, the rainbow ties the already sweet and peaceful scene into our colorful theme. A great cherry on top of this adorable relationship shown! Find her DeviantArt here.

Lover Bois by CraftyPoptropican

So bright! This artist is never afraid to use vibrant colors, which was perfect for this month. The warm tones that were used provide a heartfelt, warm mood in addition to all the surrounding flowers. A great scheme choice! I’m blushing just looking at it all. The emotion is break-taking, making this piece totally deserve a spotlight. Find his DeviantArt here.

Rainbows by Criaha

Ooh! Now this is definitely something we don’t see every month, considering this piece is animated! Obviously the rainbow effect is perfect for our theme, but the gif format sets it a part from other submissions. The unique colors across the character really seem to highlight the different emotions the Poptropican is expressing too. Not only is there detail in the changing facial expressions, but attention was even made towards the way the body is positioned. I can see the effort put into this one! Find her DeviantArt here.

Honorable Mentions

Eternal Colors by Red Tomato

Color Island by Purple Seagull

Happy Hare-entine’s Day by FlyingLuckECharm

Super colorful creations by everyone! Amazing as ever and always improving! With an open-ended theme like this one, your imagination is the only limit. And a late Happy Valentine’s Day! ❤

March: How do I Participate?

Community Creations is a cool series for anyone in the Poptropica community to join in on. To sum up what it’s about, it’s basically a chance to show off your artwork, creepy fan-fic, realms, costumes, and anything else that pops into your mind.

If we really like the piece you submit, we will feature it here on the PHB! As long as it relates to that month’s theme. So what is March’s theme? March’s theme is…

Historical!

There’s no time like the present for this theme, aye? Lots of people think of St. Patrick’s Day when thinking of March, but not everyone celebrates such a holiday. That being said, it was influenced (like most holidays) by historical figures. Additionally, we’ve just recently reached Community Creation’s one year anniversary, a big milestone in the PHB’s history! Change is happening all around us, in and out of Poptropica. So let’s take a look back in our textbooks this month!

Maybe make Poptropica outfits for your favorite historical figures? Draw scenes from your favorite time period inspired islands, like Mystery Train and Time Tangled. Even recreate monuments in your Poptropica Worlds house perhaps. These are just a few ideas to get you started, because the possibilities are endless!

Framed!

Submitting: Comment below with a link to whatever you’ve created OR share it with me (SydVC aka Spotted Dragon) on DeviantArt, Twitter, or Discord.

Results: I will feature 5 of the submissions as well as 3 honorable mentions.

Limitations: Nothing NSFW, and make sure you relate to the theme.

Due Date: I will take any entries before the end of this month. Submit as many things as you’d like!

I will always be sure to let you know I have seen your creation. Bonus points if you make a compelling description for your piece! While quality counts, I’m mainly looking for something to simply catch my eye, so don’t be afraid to join in!